McLaren warns against taking 2025 lightly – you can’t afford to put all your eggs in the 2026 basket just yet
McLaren not only won the Constructors’ Championship title in the 2024 Formula One season. Many experts also believe that the team from Woking had the fastest car in the field for much of last year.
For some, McLaren is therefore even favored to win the upcoming 2025 season. But Neil Houldey, McLaren’s engineering director, says, “You won’t win in 2025 without [development].”
“We know that the car can be faster. We can further develop the car,” Houldey is sure. Although the McLaren MCL38 was already a fast car, and for many even the fastest in the field, they will have to step it up again in 2025.
With regard to the competition from Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari, he says: “There’s no reason why these teams won’t bring a lot of performance next season, and we’ll need to be there doing the same if we want to win the championship.”
2025 should not be sacrificed for 2026
because that is “of course our goal,” said Houldey aggressively. He explains: “We know that as a team, we can find ways to be more effective and efficient in every area and also to deliver more and more performance in the individual groups.”
“For us, 2025 is the same as any other year and an opportunity to show what McLaren is capable of now,” explains Houldey. However, all ten Formula 1 teams face a very special challenge this year.
Because since January 1, work on the new cars for 2026 has officially been allowed in the wind tunnel. This is important because a completely new set of regulations will come into force in the premier class. The teams must therefore divide their focus between two projects in parallel.
According to Houldey, it is not an option for McLaren to focus exclusively on 2026 in the factory. Then they will be left behind in 2025, he warns, making it clear that McLaren wants to be in contention for the world title in both years.
Houldey: There is still room for improvement in all areas
And although the current cars are slowly but surely reaching the end of their life cycle, Houldey says improvements are still possible. He points to the situation a year ago, when McLaren made a big leap forward with the rear wing, for example.
“It was clear that our rear wings were not optimal in 2023, so we focused on them to make sure we were at the top here,” he reveals, adding: ‘We started from a position where we hadn’t developed our wings enough.’
“I would say that we are now very, very close [to Red Bull], and it’s not an area where we’ll stop developing. So, like everywhere on this car, there’s still a lot of work to be done, and we know we can still add a lot of performance to the car,” said Houldey.
“So there is no area where we can say we are satisfied and done. There is definitely more to do, and we now have to figure out how to take the performance from the idea to the CFD and wind tunnel to the track,” he explains.
Because McLaren not only wants to defend the constructors’ title in 2025. If possible, they also want to finally win their first drivers’ title since Lewis Hamilton in 2008.
